Should we import the values of the Middle East?

Picture the following hypothetical geopolitical dilemma: There is a region of the world that is steeped in white supremacism, and many, if not most, of its inhabitants subscribe to that hateful mentality. Now let’s assume this ideology of hate never led to widespread terrorism, was not rooted in a geopolitical effort to subvert western civilization, and was not trying to overpower civilization with its birth rates. Nonetheless, would we readily admit immigrants from that region?

More aptly put, would we rapidly accelerate immigration from such a region and make it the fastest-growing subset of our immigration?

Anyone with a shred of intellectual honesty would say no. While everyone in America has a First Amendment right to harbor any hateful ideology he wishes, there is no affirmative right to immigrate. Immigration is a privilege at the discretion of a sovereign nation, and it has always been the policy since our founding only to admit immigrants of “merit” (Madison) and those who share our “republican-American values” (Jefferson).

Is it tolerant to bring in the intolerant?

Fast-forward to this generation of political leaders, and we have abandoned these bedrock principles. Consider a newly published survey conducted by a German think tank showing that “more than half of Muslim asylum seekers showed clear tendencies of an anti-Semitic attitude pattern”:

When asked by the investigators if “Jews have too much influence in the world,” 52% of Syrians said yes, while 53% of Iraqis agreed with the statement. Nearly 60% of Afghans said Jews wield too much influence, while a mere 5.4% of those from Eritrea – a Christian-majority country – held antisemitic views. Some Eritreans said they were familiar with Jews from the Bible.

Interestingly enough, despite the persecution of Christians in Syria, 98 percent of the refugees from Syria, even since Trump’s inauguration, have been Muslim.

The contrast between Muslims and Christians in the Middle East is also borne out by data collected by Pew a few years ago. Take a look at the percentage of those from selected Muslim countries who dislike Jews and/or support Sharia law.

Undoubtedly, there are some individuals yearning to escape the Middle East mentality, but as the German survey indicates, and what the reality of reverse-assimilation in the West affirms before our very eyes, these views are all too prevalent among those immigrating to the West as well.

Like any other policy, in immigration, numbers matter

Now consider the fact that Arabic is the fastest-growing language on U.S. college campuses and among the immigrant population in general, an indication that Muslim immigration from the Middle East is the fastest-growing subset of our immigration system. We bring in over 100,000 immigrants from the Middle East and roughly 150,000 foreign students every single year in recent years, and the trend is growing every year. Just during the five-year period from 2009 to 2013, we’ve admitted 680,000 immigrants from the Middle East, larger than the entire Muslim population of Belgium, which is now overrun with jihad.

It doesn’t take a genius to understand that when such large numbers of immigrants are invited from countries with such anti-democratic, anti-enlightened, and anti-Jewish sentiments, on average we will be importing their culture, too. At that point, it becomes a cumulative effect and a numbers game. Instead of inviting in individual of merit to assimilate into our values, we invite in the values of the Middle East.

And unlike in our hypothetical example of white supremacist immigrants, there is a concerted effort through the “Hijrah” to take over the West by increasing Muslim immigrant birth rates. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is the de facto leader of the global Muslim Brotherhood, recently called upon his “brothers and sisters in Europe” to begin a baby boom.

The results of the Hijrah agenda in Europe are crystal clear to anyone with open eyes who gazes upon our neighbors across the pond. The question is, will we continue their mistakes and remain willfully blind to the core problem while focusing in a vacuum on ISIS as the only problem?

The enduring lesson of the recent homegrown Islamic terror attacks in Europe and America is that many of the second-generation children of Middle Eastern immigrants become more radicalized. While there are roughly 3.3 million Muslims in America, approximately double the number at the time of the 9/11 attacks, as of 2014 there were 918,306 U.S.-born children of immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries. More importantly, 42,163 of them will turn 18 every single year, the prime age for radicalization and jihad. According to a 2015 survey from the Center for Security Policy, 29 percent of American Muslim males under 45 believe that violence against America is justified in order to make Sharia the law of the land.

Wouldn’t it be prudent to heed the words of Dr. Nidal Alsayyed, a brave Imam from southeast Texas, who, recognizing the growing trend among the youth, said we “need to stop taking new ones until we fix the existing situation.” Alsayyed was fired from his position for expressing his support for a cool-off period of new immigration from the Middle East.

These are not our historical immigration values

Never in our history did we welcome hateful or disruptive ideologies to our shores, even when they were nowhere near the level of subversion and violence we are witnessing from Islamic supremacism. This is why during the Cold War (and still the law today (Sec. 212 of the INA)), we barred entry not just to specific totalitarian groups or KGB members, but to all Communists. This is also why throughout our history we have banned “obnoxious persons,” “prostitutes,” (Page Act of 1875), “lunatics, idiots, polygamists, those engaged in acts of ‘moral turpitude’” (Immigration Act of 1882 and 1891), and anarchists “who disbelieve in or who [are] opposed to all organized government, or who [are members] of or affiliated with any organization entertaining or teaching such disbelief in or opposition to all organized government” (Immigration Act of 1903).

Lest one think these were merely sentiments of “a racist era” (actually, this was our open period of immigration), these were in fact the values of our founders. I dedicated an entire chapter in Stolen Sovereignty to studying the immigration principles of our founders and how, in the words of Theodore Sedgewick, they only wanted “reputable and worthy characters; such only were fit for the society into which they were blended.” This is why the very first naturalization acts in the 1790s required “good moral behavior” and that immigrants “abjure” all fidelity to foreign powers, which is clause of the oath of citizenship to this very day.

The idea of only bringing in immigrants who share our values was put into practice even during colonial times, when we were in strong need of new people to fill up the frontier. From page 128 of Stolen Sovereignty:

Despite the enormous need for more labor and population in general during the colonial era, the colonies vigilantly guarded against harmful immigration and societal transformation. As the great American immigration historian Maldwyn Allen Jones concluded, “[S]ide by side with laws designed to promote and encourage immigration, there existed others whose purpose was to exclude or restrict it.” What factors did the colonists consider when crafting immigration policy? Jones explained: “Religious affiliation, economic status, and moral standing were the yardsticks by which the desirability of immigrants was measured.”

Sure, our political values of exclusion and acceptance have changed since those days, but the foundational principle of bringing in only those who love our republican values of liberty and tolerance is timeless. So are the constitutional principles behind the right of a nation to exclude for any reason. And when there are existential global security concerns, there is no room for debate. Existing law stipulates that “an alien whose entry or proposed activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is inadmissible” (8 U.S. Code § 1182(a)(3)(C)).

These are bedrock values and principles that even a Democrat like Harry Reid understood just one generation ago, yet now most conservatives can’t even articulate them. These are the values for which our grandfathers fought and died for 73 years ago at Normandy. That we would willingly bring in such antithetical values, as a ticking time bomb in our own midst, is the ultimate rejection of their sacrifice.

In many respects, mass migration from the Middle East is the point of no return in the destruction of western civilization. Unchecked political correctness now threatens our whole system of values and our very survival.

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Author: Daniel Horowitz

Daniel Horowitz is a senior editor of Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @RMConservative.